Library of Congress [Up on the Hill] 1 MEN AGAINST GRANITE Roaldus Richmond, Vermont Writers' Project. Recorded in Writers' Section Files DATE: FEB 27 1941 I UP ON THE HILL The car passed through crooked streets lined with frame houses, turned sharply and labored up a steep grade between great pyramids of waste granite. The valleys below were still drowned in white mist, but the hilltop stood clear in the early morning light. The homely wooden houses of Graniteville and Websterville were scattered over the broad summit of Millstone Hill, their windows catching the long flat rays of the rising sun. In the distance the mountains stood ranked against the sky. Five of the six men crowded into the automobile were silent, still sullen from sleep. The sixth, the youngest and biggest, was Dominick Mori and he was kidding and laughing through the smoke of his cigarette. Leroux, the blacksmith, said: “You're too damn cheerful for so early in the morning, Dom. You're worse'n my wife. She's a Swede and nothing bothers her. She gets up so cheerful it driven me crazy.” “Must be because I live right,” grinned Dom Mori. [Up on the Hill] http://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh3.38021519 Library of Congress “Hell,” said Leroux. “At your age a man don't have to live right.” At the top of the grade they wheeled round into a row of parked cars, and the men got out with their dinnerpails. It was 2 just before eight o'clock. Dom Mori walked past derrick- masts and across railroad tracks to the wooden guard-rail at the brink of the quarry. It was a vast open pit some three-hundred feet deep. The granite had a clean gray look; the walls were sliced down step by step an with a giant knife. Overhead was a network of guywires and cables interlaced against the pale blue sky. On all sides loomed gaunt mounds of grout, giving the entire hill the appearance of a ruined fortress. Dow Mori joined his friend, [Pepe?] Perez, another strapping youngster, on the quarry rim. Perez grinned and tossed his black head. “Another day in the hole, kid.” He swore. “If anyone told me five years ago I'd be in a quarry I'd told him be was nuts. It's the last thing I ever thought of doing, Dom.” “Better than being in the army, Pepe.” “You'll be in the army yet, boy,” Perez said. “I've got a wife and a kid.” “They're going to take married men first. They're more used to fighting,” said Don Mori. “Well, here we go.” Now the men were climbing down the steep plank stairs into the quarryhole, French, Italian, Spanish, Irish and Scotch, carrying lunchboxes and tools. It was a long way down. The stairs seemed to drop sheer and dizzily under your feet. At the bottom it was still damp and cold; the sun wasn't high enough to penetrate the depths. The pump man already sucking water from the lowest corner. Dominick Mori left Perez and joined the Old- Timer, Lavalle, a veteran French quarryman with whom 3 he worked. They crossed the uneven stone floor and climbed a high ladder made of logs with two-by- fours for rungs. All around the quarry men were climbing such ladders to work on shelves [Up on the Hill] http://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh3.38021519 Library of Congress at various levels. Dom Mori and the old-Timer were well up toward the rim, and that was good because the sun reached them early. The blocks they were to work on had already been chalked off by the boss, and yesterday they had drilled along the chalklines with channel bars. Now the pieces were partly loosened from their bed on the ledge. The Old-Timer said they wouldn't have to call the powder man up to blast them out, they could do it with the air drills. The old-Timer didn't like to use dynamite or even black powder. The rock they were working on was good and clear, unstreaked by salt- horse or black-horse, the grain running horizontal in a drift. It would be good stuff for the stonecutters down in the City to work with, and Dom thought of his older brother, Aldo, who was a carver. Dom and Aldo were very close, pals as well as brothers, and Dom had been lonely ever since Aldo got married and moved from the Hill down into Barre. Dom and his mother were alone in the house on the Hill now. His father was dead. It was a nice comfortable little home, but now with Aldo gone too it seemed empty. His mother never complained but Dom knew she must be lonesome there all day by herself. And nights as well when he was out with Angela. Sometimes Dom took his mother to movies down in the City. He was 4 proud of her. She still looked young and handsome, and she was so understanding and generous and devoted. “Well, how's the old strike-breaker this morning?” Dom grinned at his mate. “Don't be calling me a scab,” growled the Old-Timer. “I told you I came here in 1892 when I was nineteen years old. I was here before most of you Wops. I came down from Quebec.” “Sure,” kidded Dominick. “In 1921 when they brought all you farmers down from Canada to break the strike and take all the jobs.” “What do you know, a young punk like you?” said the Old-Timer. “I was right here and I helped lick some of them scabs, too. We had some fun with them new fellers. They was all farmers, they didn't know nothing, and they worked cheap. I know some union men helped [Up on the Hill] http://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh3.38021519 Library of Congress show them new Frenchmen the trade. That was a bad thing. After that big strike I didn't get no work for two years. Two whole years, by God.” The chatter of the pneumatic drills now made conversation impossible. Dust clouded up around them as the steel chewed into the gray stone. ************ Old-Timer Lavalle was a short stocky man of sixty-seven with a face like wrinkled leather and red-rimmed eyes. Dust covered him and lined the deep creases in the back of his neck. He threw one leg over his jack-hammer and the vibration shook his entire body. Dom Mori held his own drill steady with powerful young arms. 5 Lavalle had been in the quarries ever since 1892, except for six years in the Ely Copper Mine at Vershire. His father had worked the asbestos mines in the Province of Quebec before coming to Barre. A quarry accident killed him. Lavalle had been on the Hill a long time and raised a family there. Now there wan only one daughter left at home, and she kept house for the Old-Timer. His wife was dead and all the others had gone away, married and settled down elsewhere. None of his sons were in the granite business. Lavalle didn't want them in it. “No place for a young feller, in the quarries,” he said. The Old-Timer had a little house of his own in Upper Graniteville, a quiet pleasant place to live now. He could remember when it was like a mining town in full boom; and nothing quiet about it then. The hill was a wild raw place in those early days. The workers were mostly young, unmarried and reckless. They lived in boarding-houses, spent their money freely, and did a lot of hard drinking. "Salting the colt," was what they called driving a horse-and-buggy out into the country to buy a jug of cider from some farmer. The arrival of the stagecoach bringing the mail from Barre was a great event each day at six P.M. [Up on the Hill] http://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh3.38021519 Library of Congress Was it Black Mike or Red John who said, “What do we do? We don't do nothing but work and eat and sleep. On payday we hire a team, go to Barre; get drunk, smash the wagon, and pay a fine or go to jail.” Then a derrick was operated by hand-power, two men on the crank. Later horses were hitched to long sweeps and plodded 6 about in a circle to generate power for the derrick. A quarryman couldn't earn more than $2.25 a day at that time, but money went a lot farther then. That was as good as $7 or $8 a day now, maybe better. The Hill had changed all right. It was settled and peaceful now, the workers were family men, the boarding-houses were gone. The Old-Timer seldom went down to the City any more; most of his friends were dead or gone away. He liked best the long summer evenings, cool and still on his porch after getting the sun all day in the quarry. Every evening he sat there smoking his pipe until the shadows deepened and the lights winked on. The smell of green earth and woodlands was sweet after the hot stonedust of the daytime. Lavalle missed Marie, his wife, but he never spoke of her... In the summer his sons and daughters brought their families to visit, and he was happy playing with his grand-children. He was glad he had stayed away from the sheds in Barre.